Wisp of a Thing: A Novel of the Tufa (Tufa Novels) by Alex Bledsoe Page B

long period of silence except for the fire’s crackling, Rob turned to Doyle. “You know who I am, don’t you?”
    “Yeah,” Doyle said guiltily. “Knew you looked familiar, so I looked you up online.”
    Berklee looked from Rob to her husband. “Who is he? Is he famous?”
    “I guess,” Rob said. He gazed into the fire. “I was a contestant on that TV show, So You Think You Can Sing? I made it all the way to the finals. Me and two other idiots. The producers were going to fly my girlfriend Anna in for the show, to surprise me.”
    “Her plane crashed,” Berklee finished in a small voice. “I remember. Oh, my God, I’m so sorry.”
    “Me, too,” Rob agreed. “It was all such a stupid situation. I only auditioned on a dare, I can’t stand shows like that. They celebrate all the wrong things about music, you know? Technique over talent, skill over soul. I mean, I write my own songs and that’s what I want to play, not the stuff a bunch of market researchers pick out. But I kept getting selected for the next round, and before I knew it, there I was, in fucking Hollywood.”
    The flames blurred in his vision. He realized as he spoke that he had yet to just talk about what happened, to anyone.
    “You sang George Jones,” Berklee said.
    “Yeah. I don’t know why, really. The damn producers kept wanting it to be ‘Wind Beneath My Wings.’ But I told them I’d either sing what I wanted, or just sit there without making a sound. They weren’t about to take that chance.”
    “So why are you here?” Doyle asked gently.
    “Because God wants me to suffer, I guess.”
    “No, I mean, why are you here in Needsville?”
    “The truth? You’ll laugh.”
    “No, we won’t,” Berklee assured him. Sympathetic tears streaked her face.
    “I had to do the final show, right? I’d signed a contract, and only your own death gets you out of that. So I was backstage at the Fox Theater in Atlanta, where they were staging it, and I was a wreck. Really. They hadn’t given me any time to myself to deal with things, I guess because they knew if they did, I’d just collapse into jelly. I was waiting in this stairwell all alone, and it … just … hit me. She was really dead.
    “And then this guy appeared. He was dressed like one of those old country music guys, with the sequins and the fancy boots, but he couldn’t have been more than forty. He sat with me while I was crying, and then he told me he could help. He said…”
    He trailed off. I’ll sound like a lunatic, he thought.
    “What did he say?” Doyle prompted.
    Rob took a deep breath. “He said, ‘There’s a song that heals broken hearts. I’m not kidding, and I’m not exaggerating. Go find this song, learn to play it, and all that pain you have inside will be gone.’”
    Doyle and Berklee exchanged a look.
    “I didn’t believe him, needless to say,” he continued. “But he told me to come here, to Needsville, and get to know the Tufa. He said it was one of their songs, and since I looked like them, they’d share it with me. He said they’d been around since before the wind rounded off the Smokies, and that I’d find the song I wanted ‘on a hill, long forgotten, carved in stone.’”
    “So you came here,” Berklee said.
    “Had nothing better to do,” Rob said. “I didn’t really want to be around people I knew. I knew the sequin cowboy was nuts, of course. But I couldn’t stop thinking about his story. And after I read about the Tufa online, I decided it might be the kind of vacation I needed. Away from everything that reminded me of her.”
    “The Tufa don’t have their own songs,” Doyle said. “They know the same ones everyone else does. There’s no mystery to them. They’re just … folks.”
    “Well, except for Bliss Overbay,” Berklee said bitterly. She finished her beer and crushed the can between her hands. “Right, Doyle? She’s a mystery, ain’t she?”
    Doyle looked at her over the top of his beer. “You’re